Cédric Jubillar listens to the verdict at the Albi courthouse, Friday, October 17, 2025. SERGIO AQUINDO FOR « LE MONDE »
On the night of December 15 to 16, 2020, Delphine Jubillar was killed by her husband. The 33-year-old nurse, mother of two, has now officially joined the long list of femicide victims. For now, Cédric Jubillar will appeal the sentence handed down by the criminal court of Tarn in Albi on Friday, October 17, at 3:15 pm. He will once again be presumed innocent. From that point on, the facts must be expressed not as certainties, but as possibilities.
Thirty years in prison. The court and jury stood firm. The sentence handed down was exactly what prosecutor Pierre Aurignac had requested. The written reasoning for the criminal court's ruling will be released in three days and will detail the elements that convinced the judges and jurors. Yet the verdict already makes it clear that, after four weeks of hearings, at least seven out of the nine – six citizen jurors and three professional judges – saw the Jubillar case as yet another tragic but ordinary case of domestic murder. And that a "body of evidence" can amount to proof.
They had no doubt that Delphine Jubillar had not simply disappeared, but was dead. No doubt that she was killed. No doubt about who was responsible for the murder. The 33-year-old nurse did not simply leave and abandon her two young children and all of her belongings at home. She did not join a cult or leave for jihad, as Cédric Jubillar once suggested. Nor did she go out to walk the dogs late at night as he claimed.
